Husband said 'nice comb-over' to a man at a work drinks event

[Ramsgarthy]

My husband was at a networking drinks event for lawyers last night in London.

He is from Northern Ireland and when another man heard his voice, they said to him, 'you sound like you should be on Crimewatch'.

I understand that this was meant to be a joke (the idea being that he sounds like he's from the IRA). it is not a great joke.

But my husband replied sarcastically, 'nice comb-over', referring to the man's attempt to cover up his bald patch.

The man replied, 'now you're getting personal'.

No drinks had been had at this stage.

I think my husband's reply about the comb-over was unkind and uncalled for, because it was about his personal appearance, and would make him feel self-conscious. Do others agree?

English people insult me quite regularly, even my PILs have done it. I don't think they see insulting Irish people as being in the same league as insulting people from other cultures. That's not an excuse for it, that's just my experience.

However, IME if you insult an Irish person you should be prepared for an insult back. Take it on the chin and you're good. Act all offended, you're a total arsewipe.

Do you really not understand why combover's comments about the DH's accent and heritage were offensive?

He is doubtless completely unaware of the history he's referencing, the type that thinks the Troubles was the IRA bombing London, without any understanding of the other groups killing people or the scale of the death toll and generations of damage done in NI. Prick.

When we visited relatives in England My parents have had the experience of being stared at,spoken about and declined entry to restaurants etc.

I think you’re confusing different situations. This was a professional networking event for lawyers, not a family gathering — it’s not an appropriate place for trading insults, ethnic or otherwise, any more than references to my ‘brogue’ were appropriate at a job interview at an elite UK university.

I think your husband's comeback was great. Don't dish it out if you can't take it. Oh and don't be a bigoted twat.

I don't agree with you at all, and find it weird that you think your husband's comment was worse?

If Combover doesn't like personal retorts made, then he shouldn't make them himself. Arseholes like this always rely on the other person being too polite or taken aback to respond. More fool him in this case.

I've been insulted in professional settings, by doctors, literally everyone. I don't think a lot of people even realise they're doing it tbh.

You really think that a bully who believes 'person from NI = IRA member' would not use offensive terms to refer to them when he feels on the back foot and humiliated as a result of his bullying?

We don't know that the DH is Irish. That's... Kind of the point...

TBH I'd much rather the out and out insult than the 'polite' insults like 'Oh I didn't expect you to actually have an accent' (when speaking for the first time to someone I'd only communicated with through text).

I understand what comb-over said, but just can't imagine getting that worked up about it. Although to be fair to the husband, it doesn't sound like he did get worked up. The whole thing sounds like a non-event until comb-over got flouncy. And could have gone back to being a non-event until OP got upset with her husband...

It's in the OP's OP.

The OP states he’s from NI.

Either you’re being purposefully obtuse or didn’t read the op, he from NI

Well the odious bully about whom we're talking - and whose nasty way of thinking I was trying to understand - clearly still thinks nothing of making a xenophobic reference that would have been grossly offensive thirty years ago, let alone now; so, yes, I very much did think that he was likely to be still living in the past with his xenophobia.

EDIT: Apologies, I confused your reply to a PP's response to me with others that were directly responding to me; but I assumed that PP was citing it in the same original context as I mentioned the offensive term.

I was prepared to say his comment was unreasonable, but as the other guy landed the first punch (metaphorically), it’s his own fault.

People in glass houses etc etc

So refreshing to hear someone shut down nasty behaviour from the off.

How is what your husband more unkind that the nasty comment from
the other bloke?

’Dignified silence’ is highly overrated.

Oh good lord @echt , @BlindHarbour and @Zone2NorthLondon if everyone from NI was happily Irish then there wouldn't exactly be a long and bloodied history to unpick, would there.

The husband is equally likely to be British as he is Irish and you'd want to cop yourselves on.

Oh, me too. Oxford college heads, the Lord Mayor of somewhere, my gynaecologist, at job interviews, academic conferences. But I don’t think ‘trading insults’, whether ‘friendly’ or not, is appropriate for a professional setting. I mean, if I’m on work mode, I don’t want to be responding to ethnic prejudice via insulting someone’s appearance.

I think people who don't realise that they themselves have an accent might be my all time favourite kind of stupid.

This did not happen unless your parents were being rude or inappropriate. It just doesn't happen.

Given @Cailin66 's username is an Irish word, I think she meant Paddies in the wry sense rather than with any sincerity.

Interested in how op thinks her dh should have reacted
demure smile?
Joined in, oh yer so funny. What an astute observation
Over mannered and safe chitty chat?

passivity and a preoccupation with manners wouldn’t have been the right response, fortunately her husband was incisive and sarcastic in response . Good

@CelesteCunningham, I think you’re missing the point. It makes zero difference what passport the man has, or how he identifies. He might be in the Orange Order for all we know. But he’s a ‘paddy’ who is associated via his accent with the IRA in the eyes of his fellow lawyer.

One of the odder things I discovered in my decades in England was that (a) people couldn’t distinguish between accents, or, say between Martin McGuinness and Roy Foster, or Séamus Heaney and Jackie Healy-Rae, and (b) vanishingly few people appeared to be aware of the existence of loyalist paramilitaries.

Dont give what you cant take! I would have been in a fit of giggles over the "comb over"!!